And then he left her, looking after him with her hair partly brushed, and he ran out the east gate which was never locked, and fared as fast as he could along the king’s highway, in all haste to grow wise and _really_ good and loved and beautiful. Hazen went a day’s journey in the dust of the highway, and toward nightfall he came to a deep wood. To him the wood seemed like a great hospitable house, with open doors between the trees and many rooms through which he might wander at will, the whole fair in the light of the setting sun. And he entered the gloom as he might have entered a palace, expecting to meet someone. Immediately he was aware of an old man seated under a plane tree, and the old man addressed him with:-- “Good even, little lad. Do you travel far?” “Not very, sir,” Hazen replied. “I am only going to find my fortune and to become wise, _really_ good, beautiful, and loved.” “So!” said the old man. “Rest here a little and let us talk about it.” Hazen sat beside him and they talked about it. Now, I wish very much that I might tell you all that they said, but the old man was so old and wise that his thoughts came chiefly as pictures, or in other form without words, so that it was not so much what he said that held his meaning as what he made Hazen feel by merely being with him. Indeed, I do not know whether he talked about the stars or the earth or the ways of men, but he made little Hazen somehow know fascinating things about them all. And when time had passed and the dusk was nearly upon them, the old man lightly touched Hazen’s forehead:-- “Little lad,” he said, “have you ever looked in there?” “In my own head?” said Hazen, staring. “Even so,” said the old man. “No? But that might well be a pleasant thing to do. Will you not do that, for a little while?” This was the strangest thing that ever Hazen had heard. But next moment, under the old man’s guidance, he found himself, as it were, turned about and seeing things that he had never seen, and looking back into his own head as if there were a window that way. And he did it with no great surprise, for it seemed quite natural to him, and he wondered why he had never done it before. Of the actual construction of things in there Hazen was not more conscious than he would have been of the bricks and mortar of a palace filled with wonderful music and voices and with all sorts of surprises. Here there were both surprises and voices. For instantly he could see a company of little people, _every one of whom looked almost like himself_. And it was as it is when one stands between two mirrors set opposite, and the reflections reflect the reflections until one is dizzy; only now it was as if all the reflections were suddenly to be free of the mirror and be little living selves, ready to say different things.